Well, in this top five expose, I’m going to show the top five times he just frankly sucked. Let it not be said he’s been typecast, because in these situations he plays basically the guy he’d be too cool to talk to in any other movie.

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5. Deep Blue Sea (1999): Beware of Samuel L. Jackson in glasses! Glasses are his kryptonite, while eye-patches are his spinach! No sooner does bespectacled Jackson proclaim his lack of fear of sharks, then a big one takes that as his cue to chomp down on some delicious whopass flesh! Yes, he got killed by a shark when he wasn’t even in the water.

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(gG to 3:30 to see Ray Arnold, Jackson’s character)

4. Jurassic Park (1993): Glasses again! So you know right away this won’t end well. Yep, he’s dino-chow. At least, so it seems. So unawesome is he that he is killed off-screen! We just see body parts . . . Well, part. Even the bloodsucking lawyer got a better on-screen death! Do computer scientists rank lower on the movie death scene scale? Lower, than first-chick-to-have-sex-on-screen-in-a-horror-movie, lower even than the guy who cowers in the bathroom? This was a low point in the Samuel L. Jackson badassery index. Perhaps only exceeded by that time he was menaced by Ben Affleck

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3. Changing Lanes (2002): Otherwise known as that time Samuel L. Jackson was menaced by Ben Affleck. And not Batman-Ben Affleck; lawyer Ben Affleck. Yes there are glasses.

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2. Amos and Andrew (1993): Once you’re done shuddering at whoever green-lit this title and the idea that they should spend millions of dollars on a movie that puts Nicholas Cage in blackface, keep in mind that Jackson is wearing eyeglasses in this film, so game over. Low point: Nicholas Cage holds up Jackson at gunpoint and ties him up. To be fair, Jackson does use a frying pan as a weapon in this film, which does a tiny bit to salvage his reputation for making this film. I would have liked it better if he’d said, “This is your brain on frying pan” after he hit the guy, though.

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1. Unbreakable (2000): in Jackson’s first superhero movie, he plays a guy with brittle bone disease who creates large disasters in an effort to uncover super-strong individuals who can survive those disasters—in this case, Bruce Willis. This is basically a Superman movie in which Superman doesn’t know he has super powers until his arch-nemesis tells him. Then, Jackson becomes the world’s most pathetic super villain. So pathetic that he doesn’t even get killed by being eaten by alligators or cut in half by a laser—he just gets arrested.

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Extra: This scene from The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), so busy singing he doesn’t notice the old geezer getting the drop on him.

OK, after watching all these clips, I take it back! No matter what movie he’s in, no matter how ignominious his role, he’s still the toughest, most authoritative guy in the movie!